The Birmingham Genealogical Society was organized March 15, 1959. It was organized exclusively for educational and research purposes, and to foster preservation of genealogical and historical material. We are located in Jefferson County, Alabama, USA.

Category Archives: Cemeteries

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A group of concerned community members and descendants/relatives of those buried in the Fraternal Cemetery in Pratt City have planned a 2nd clean-up day at the cemetery on March 23, 2013 beginning at 9am.

Have you ever heard of Clayton’s Cove? What about Ayres? Or Taylor? According to an article in the Trussville Tribune, these names are all associated with a once thriving town in east Jefferson County. This area is now part of Clay.

Read about this place and the historic Mt. Cavalry Presbyterian cemetery in the online article here.

Mr. Wilborn will demonstrate the art of grave dowsing. Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites, and many other objects and materials, as well as so-called currents of earth radiation, without the use of scientific apparatus.

Please wear comfortable shoes. We will meet at the chapel. Mr. Wilborn will be selling dowsing rods for $5.00 at the meeting if anyone is interested in purchasing one.

Proving a local doctor’s claim started a search for the identity of graves in a mysterious small cemetery plot. Research by Jim Anderson and Charlie Harris has led to discoveries connecting presumed slave descendants to property on which now sits Health South’s corporate headquarters. Along the way a picture of life in Shades Valley during the turn of the century comes into focus. Such notable family names as Tannehill, Blach, Bearden, and McElwain crop up in the findings along with lesser known families of Johnson, Cammack, and Raburn. The search involved plotting property boundaries, identifying long-lost travelways and reconstructing chains-of-title from modern-day maps back to the original land patent deed grants.